I agree that Darwin's word-choice of "selection"*1, to describe how Evolution works, inadvertently implied some "agency"*2 doing the choosing from among the options, both fit & unfit, generated by random mutations. His model for "selection" was the artificial evolution of domesticated animals suitable for human purposes. But the notion of natural selection suggests some kind of universal teleological agency programming the mechanisms of Evolution to work toward an inscrutable Final Cause : the output of evolution. — Gnomon

The use of "natural selection" should not be problematic. It means adaptation and change. Phenotype can change. We're in the philosophy forum, that's why you think we should apply the scrutiny in word usage and meaning.

We should try to exercise that same self-determination in trying to untie the knots of our own personal suffering before we choose a final solution. — Nils Loc

I find it amazing how often people fail to see the point of existing. So they think of suicide as an "alternative". Once a person is an adult, their existence is their responsibility. (Note I said existence, not "life", for in the latter, one could be in a coma and is the charge of a medical team).
Suppose I then ask this person who is contemplating suicide, because there's no point in his existence, to randomly kill a dog. I bet his response would be, "I can't do that. It's an innocent animal and I don't believe in cruelty to animals"! I'd say nonsense! Because he is ready to kill himself -- that is cruelty itself. He can't see the cruelty he is about to inflict to his own existence, but he can see it through the life of a dog. True story of some random person.

That is factually incorrect. As soon as any WFF of any formal system is determined to neither be provable nor refutable in that formal system then that formal system <is> determined to be incomplete. — PL Olcott

You're applying something like Gödel's theorem to something like modal logic. No wonder we can't understand each other. Logic uses a lot of propositions that aren't theorems. The "logical status" of a statement does not need a "complete theorem" in order to be .. a logical conclusion.

In effect, we aren't claiming a "complete theorem" when we say that, to say "It is raining and it is not raining at the same time" is a contradictory statement. We also aren't claiming a complete theorem, or even an incomplete theorem when we say that "if Paul is older than Tom, then Paul must have been born earlier than Tom".

Think. Do you really need a theorem to say that a square can't be drawn like a circle? No. While it is true that the definition of the square and the definition of the circle are both theorems themselves, when we make a determination that a circle cannot be drawn like a square, our own statement is not, or does not require a formulation of a theorem itself. We make a decision based on the existing theorems.

Incompleteness <is> accepted when any WFF cannot be either proved or refuted within a formal system EVEN IF it cannot be proved or refuted in this formal system because it <is> self-contradictory in this formal system. That seems to be its huge error. — PL Olcott

If that happens, we don't judge it as incomplete -- we judge it as contingently false in this system, but not in all possible worlds. A proposition is non-contingent only if, necessarily, it cannot be the case (that is, in all possible worlds, it is false).

WFF = well formed formula.

I am not talking about squaring a circle I am talking about drawing a circle that <is> a square thus not a circle. It must be in the same two dimensional plane.

"all points on a two dimensional surface that are equidistant from the center" and these exact same points form four straight sides of equal length in the same two dimensional plane. — PL Olcott

When you started off in your OP, you wanted to make a statement that is necessarily false. Which is fine. But now I think this whole thread is just nonsense.
Do the properties of a circle hold necessarily? And do the properties of a square hold necessarily? Then it goes without saying that the circle and square have asymmetrical relations. It is necessarily false that a circle can be drawn as a square.

Thus when we plug the formalized {epistemological antinomy} of the Liar Paradox into
a similar undecidability proof, we find that this semantically unsound expression "proves"
that the formal system that contains it is incomplete. — PL Olcott

Thank god that "incompleteness" is not accepted as one of the logical status of a statement.

but then seeing the actual person switch places when they arrive still makes a person feel cheated. Any thoughts? — TiredThinker

It's called social fairness. Queuing is still one of the most basic display of equality in society -- especially in places like public services (getting your license, applying for something, etc.) Of course we now have appointments you can make online so that when you get to the location, all you need to do is check in.
But, let's stick to the old ways of getting in line. Individuals standing in line is supposed to stand in line.

Please refer to modal logic. Don't focus on the symbols, rather focus on the explanation provided by the writer for why using the terminology "logically impossible" in propositions is misguided.

The concept of contingent content
Every proposition satisfies both the Law of the Excluded Middle and the Law of Noncontradiction. The first says that every proposition is either true or false, that there is no 'middle' or third truth-value. The second law says that no proposition is both true and false. Together these two laws say that the properties of truth and falsehood are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive of the entire class of propositions.

Corresponding to each of these two laws just cited we can state two analogues for modal status. In the first place we can say that every proposition is either contingent or noncontingent. And in the second, we can say that no proposition is both contingent and noncontingent. The two properties, contingency and noncontingency, are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive of the class of propositions.

Between contingency and noncontingency there is no 'middle' or third category. Contingency and noncontingency, like truth and falsehood, do not come in degrees. No proposition is 'half contingent' or 'three-quarters noncontingent5 or any other fractional measure, just as no proposition is half or three-quarters true (or false). No contingent proposition is more contingent or less contingent than any other contingent proposition; and no noncontingent proposition is more noncontingent or less noncontingent than any other noncontingent proposition.

None of this means, however, that we cannot talk cogently of one proposition being closer to being necessarily true than another. To explicate this latter concept we shall introduce the concept of the contingent content of a proposition. And to do this we begin by noticing a curious fact about necessary truths.

Here's an excerpt from a book which I did not purchase:

such that you relive your life after you've first lived it, wouldn't that require another time dimension? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is one possibility. Observers in another time dimension could see our past, but not us in the same time dimension.

I said it is not recognized in philosophy. Or Philosophy, for the proper name. The words "logically impossible" is never formally accepted as epistemic terms.

However, you might be thinking of "logical possibility" which the likes of Chalmers are prone to use. But we can't state the opposite: logically impossible. It's nonsense.

Contradictions are not the same as logically impossible.

@PL Olcott "logically impossible" is not recognized in philosophy. It's either "illogical" or "impossible". The two are used in different contexts.

Impossibility in philosophy is used in the physical event -- i.e. it's impossible to be in two places at the same exact time. Another one, it's impossible for humans to fly in the air.
Illogical is what you mean when you say a circle cannot be a square. Of course you would object to my description as you might think, but squares and circles are physical objects. Actually, they are conceptual objects, hence, logical in the sense of "it makes sense by definition that a circle has 360 degree rotation while the sum of the degree of the square is also 360".

I wonder if the past, in any sense, still exists. Or is the past utterly gone? — Art48

It depends on whose perspective. If ours, then it's gone. We are all traveling on the same speed of light. We are all changing and carrying with us just the memories of the past. If you used to live at A street 20 years ago, and you left that place, then your past will only exist in memory.
Recently some news announced the arrival of a radio signal that started traveling some 8 billions light years ago. If our past could be captured in some radio signal and hologram, then another life forms in another galaxy could see our past. But we wouldn't see our own past.

Edit. I am responding to the quoted line above as I understand it literally -- not some reincarnation.

But I know there is a growing community of seekers who are turning almost exclusively to modern technology for answers. — Bret Bernhoft

Historically, humans have turned, from time to time, to inanimate objects for worship -- crop circles, UFOs, the Titanic (that billionaires paid to see), the stock market. They thought they're gonna get some deep answers to the questions of life. Nothing surprising here.

And with it, will come a certain reverence for and optimism about modern technology's role in the destiny of humankind. Among, amidst both inner and outer spaces. — Bret Bernhoft

An empty prophecy -- we've always overestimated the humans' capacity to do without intuition. And we've always failed. Technology is canned goods. We reach out for human contacts and human acknowledgment because this is what's natural for us. This is what feels good and comforting.

And that's what I mean by a place for which we feel homesick - a place where we found happiness. It doesn't seem to take very much, does it? — Vera Mont

I think when we search for comfort we search for that -- a simple place.

You never get to live there: it's only available to the dead. — Vera Mont

Are you talking about the purgatory for people who were bad while on Earth?

Anyway, my ideal place actually existed years ago. I won't divulge where it was, I don't know if it still exists. There were 6 of us close friends who went out one night and they had an idea where to lounge and eat pizza. I thought, cool. It was a secret place within the group. I was the last one to know that this was their hang out. It was a second floor unit in an old city building. The place was run by guys who decorated the place like it was a seedy tavern. We had a couch, ottoman, armchair, easy chair and a coffee table in one corner. Dimmed lights. The stairs leading to that unit was narrow and steep and dark. The place was clean despite the ambience. Funny, we couldn't order alcohol, of course. We spent the night chatting, relaxing, and eating. Clean fun.

People have long thought of the "paradise". Even coming up with drawings and paintings.

@baker should be coming to this thread soon.

It seems to me like this is partially right, and partially missing something. Sans some interpretation of consciousness where mind does not emerge from or interact closely with nature, it would seem to me that our descriptive languages have a close causal relationship with nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To this point, I would argue that thinking of math as a "closed," system can be misleading in this context. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think it's causal connection. Zero does not exist in nature. (Contrast that with "there are two apples on the table", which you could actually count) Certainly, saying that a 'nothing' exists in nature is a human invention. And the system of math did not include zero for thousands of years. Zero is a modern invention.

I don't know how to define "closed" in this context, but I agree. With over 26,000 Wikipedia pages, and counting, mathematics continues to expand its realms, especially into abstractions and generalizations. I suppose "closed" could mean based on axiomatic set theory, which it normally is, although frequently some distance from Cantor's creations. — jgill

Yes, our math is axiomatic. The initial axioms drive the succeeding mathematical formula.

For the purposes of this discussion, what is your definition of morality?

In its most broad sense, the study of that which is right and wrong (viz., what is permissible, omissable, obligatory, and impermissible). — Bob Ross

So, you don't include your own personal choice, no matter what your society's rules are? I mean, your own personhood -- the internal dialogue that goes on inside your feelings and mind about justice and compassion and fairness?

Yes, it is quite amazingly tedious and repetitive. Yes, it is cold, joyless and repugnant. But it turns out these are the things that make it so memorable and, at least in retrospect, stimulating.

I think it follows that at least some excellent works of literature are not entertaining, delightful, or enjoyable. — Jamal

I looked up the synopsis. Not my kind of book. To me an excellent work is engaging (not necessarily entertaining, for others would find gossips entertaining) and the elements of insights and unexpected turns are artfully interwoven into the narrative. It's hard to describe, but I'll know it when I come across one.

To me, there wouldn't be a clash of antagonistic judgments if I find a piece of work engaging. There is a reason why a work is boring -- the author lacked that skill. One wouldn't intentionally write a boring piece.

Furthermore, if there is any such obligation to do good, how do we go about determining which good actions are the "most" obligatory, for example giving money to a charity vs working at a local soup kitchen? It seems like if it is obligatory to do certain good things, even within your means, then you're almost a slave to the world around you.

So, what is the answer then? What should be the goal of a moral system? What is the grounding for the moral system, and if we aren't obligated to do good deeds, why — Jerry

There is a social contract. Living in a society obligates us to respect the social contract. That's why there's morality and the law. I wouldn't want to live in a world where people aren't obligated to help the victim of a kidnapper or rapist. Or a parent beating the child to death, literally. Or a spouse torturing the other.

A world where people aren't sure of the value of ethics and morals is a scary world. If a person walking along the sidewalk at the crack of dawn noticed a sinkhole big enough to swallow a car, he ought to warn the oncoming driver that there's a sinkhole waiting at the bottom of the slope. Stop the driver, for Christ's sake.

I didn't read the book, but the OP is fulfilling to read. Again, what an insight!

Yes, it is quite amazingly tedious and repetitive. Yes, it is cold, joyless and repugnant. But it turns out these are the things that make it so memorable and, at least in retrospect, stimulating. — Jamal

I get this. When I'm repulsed at something, it lingers in my mind like.. not as a tumor (a nice metaphor)...but like a grime that needs to be cleansed. I choose what I read now. And it's mostly non-fiction.

So as he says, it’s a cautionary tale. However, I do suspect that this is a post-hoc rationalization of what was at the time a more purely artistic effort. That is, his words from 1995, twenty years after he wrote the novel, amount to an interpretation, with no more or less legitimacy than the interpretations of critics and appreciative readers. — Jamal

If I had read the book, I would use the word "misrepresentation". Probably. Maybe now he wants to be legit, so now he calls it a cautionary tale.

Have you seen David Lynch's Mulholland Drive by chance? Despite a lot of surreal disjunction of scenes and characters, we are still able to piece together a explanation of what might be going on that makes the film deeply satisfying, meaningful. — Nils Loc

Yes, I've seen the movie. And your comment about it is on point.

I disagree. Consciousness requires storage - namely memory. Without memory, our sense of self, of place, of time, of coherent chronology, breaks down. As one with dementia experiences as their brains architecture breaks down due to disease.

If we had no memory (storage), we would not be able to revisit mentally the past, and thus contextually would not be aware that the present moment is indeed the present because we cannot retrieve anything beyond it historically. And lastly we could not anticipate a future because we don't have a past, nor present. So why expect a future? — Benj96

I understand the sentimental value you attach to memory. Memory is a very important part of consciousness. But memory and consciousness are not interchangeable. Amnesia is one condition which allows a human being to be conscious but lacking memory. In another thread some time ago, I mentioned that there are perceptions we experience that are not temporal.

"Not temporal" in the sense that memory is not needed for us to experience, objectively, a thing. Brightness is one of those. If a light flashes on you, it doesn't matter which rock or cloud you grew up in, you will experience brightness, and you will know what brightness is (though you might not have a word for it).

That passage you quoted was the starting point. He was trying to make a case -- notice his use of the word "youth" -- of the way he understood things. The one I provided is him returning back to his point -- that God did not originate from his mind, but rather external to his mind. He was arguing for the existence of God, but first he must make a case that all the other things in his mind, too, are external to him.

Look at it this way, if you have a lot of ideas in your mind, one of them is the existence of god, and others are the existence of other humans, and rocks, and things, how are you going to argue that your idea of god is objective? By making a statement that god is external to you.

Could consciousness be a form of energy like the rest? — Benj96

No. We can't harvest or store consciousness like the energy. There is no storage for consciousness. Consciousness is a live streaming.

I am not saying that philosophy is an illegitimate practice. — Bob Ross

What are you saying then?

With the proverbial "heart". It seems to be perfectly possible to live a good life without any self-reflection or philosophical contemplation. You just "follow your heart". — baker

I disagree. The one that uses the heart also uses the intellect.

The problem is that the senses often give us confusing and misleading information, i.e. they deceive us. For example, it looks to me, like there is nothing between me and the far wall of the room, but I know there is air in between. Logic has figured out that air is a substance even though it is unseen. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, this is a misrepresentation of metaphysics such as Descartes's meditation. It's not the senses that mislead you, it's the thought that ideas come out of nothing. No one is deceiving us. The world out there does not deceive.

Well, he kinda did. At the beginning of his meditations, he said something along the lines that he had hitherto held many false opinions purely because he'd swallowed the accepted wisdom. This is why he had to go back to square one, as it were, and put aside everything he thought he had known, starting with the self-evident 'cogito ergo sum'. — Wayfarer

No. Read below:

And the longer and the more carefully that I investigate these
matters, the more clearly and distinctly do I recognize their truth. But
what am I to conclude from it all in the end? It is this, that if the
objective reality of any one of my ideas is of such a nature as clearly to
make me recognize that it is not in me either formally or eminently, and
that consequently I cannot myself be the cause of it, it follows of
necessity that I am not alone in the world, but that there is another being
which exists, or which is the cause of this idea. On the other hand, had
no such an idea existed in me, I should have had no sufficient argument
to convince me of the existence of any being beyond myself; for I have
made very careful investigation everywhere and up to the present time
have been able to find no other ground. — Descartes

He is arguing for causation! You are not the cause of your own ideas of the world -- meaning, you did not just "imagine" falsely that there are things out there that make you see colors, trees, and sky. There really are colors, trees, and sky.

Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a scence from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene. — Wayfarer

First of all, thank you for starting this thread and writing the OP as you have done. I was trying to get comments in this thread https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14673/is-maths-embedded-in-the-universe-/p2
because of the reality sans observer that was brought up in yet another thread. But it seems no one wanted to respond to that problem.
As I have said previously, and before I even read your essay, it is a much different reality because now there's no more privileged vantage point from which everything is seen or experience. But of course someone here, and in other threads, had raised the problem of "we can't or shouldn't even be discussing such problem because we are the observers!"
And to that I say, we come up with a hypothesis. With hypothesis, we enjoy the freedom of the imagination -- we're not making a conclusion yet, but we're exploring the what-if. Like the quantum physics -- I hope they have not made that final analysis.

To me, how would the world be without the sentient observers? The world on a coordinate plane, a flat two-dimensional reality.

This gives rise to a kind of cognitive disorientation which underlies many current philosophical conundrums. — Wayfarer

With this I disagree. I object to the cognitive disorientation and I object to the following comment as well:

What the ancients, like Plato, demonstrated is that the senses deceive, and we ought to trust the mind with logic, over the senses, as capable of producing a more reliable and accurate "world". — Metaphysician Undercover

What does that even mean?

With our sense-perception, we can't help but view the world the way we do. Only the silly observers would not use the mind, the common sense, and logic to think about the world. How does one perceive without logic?
Descartes, for one, never claimed that humans are being deceived. He brought it up as a thought experiment. (You can correct me here if you like).

But can a story with surrealistic characters be thought provoking?
To me it’s like saying you had a revelation about a philosophical topic by reading a Disney story… You could understand the ideas of the author better, but how can it be thought provoking if you can’t stay in the story and think deeply about the characters, about how they would react in the world the author described? — Skalidris

For this question alone, no. To me, surrealism is an ambient atmosphere -- there needs to be the development of the characters themselves in order for it to be thought provoking.

If in the story, there are a lot of birches (presented as regular birches) growing underground without any light, it's illogical if the author never explains how they do photosynthesis. Similarly, if a character is presented as a healthy human being, then later in the story is completely distorted, if that distortion is never explained, it's illogical given the premises. But if the premises are that the character is completely crazy (or not a human being), then, even if the reader can't make sense of their behavior, it can be considered logical. — Skalidris

Yes, this is a very astute comment. I will give an example of the movie Lamb (2021) by the director Valdimar Jóhannsson ( Icelandic). There is no book, I'm afraid. But a screenplay co-written by the director. This is a horror genre. In the movie there is the hybrid of lamb (or ram) born in the barn of a couple who owns and runs the farm. (The baby lamb has a father which is revealed later in the story. The father is also a hybrid of human)
But for the meantime, the couple took care of the baby like she's their own -- with a head of a lamb and body of human.
I'm not gonna tell the whole story, but my point of bringing this up is, the director very skillfully just started the story with no explanation of how the hybrid came to existence. You're just gonna have to accept that piece of the story. And as you keep watching, the story just makes you want to continue watching and find out what happens in the end. The director makes you forget about that question, or he makes your forget about your gripe that there's no explanation how they came about, he only wants to make you curious about what happens next and what happens in the end.

Going back to what I said about plausibility. Here,

Whether unexplained underground birch trees strike the reader as delightful or stupid depends on the skills of the author and the experience and attitude of the reader. — Jamal

I believe this is very true. (In this case, I am using a film, instead of a book).
The plausibility lies in the relationship between the characters -- there is continuity and consistency in what happens in the end. The fact that one couldn't fault the hybrid father for what he's done is, to me, enough to fulfill this quality.

In the sense that I defined it in the OP, I don't think we need metaphysics to expose errors in our reasoning: we can do so without making ontological claims. — Bob Ross

There is no other task that makes us think in a way that does not involve memorization of equation, procedure, or statistics than metaphysics. Philosophical discussions is natural to humans.

I have not read anything from Ken Liu, but your OP makes sense.

You don’t just suddenly drop everything you believe in for the opposite, unless you have mood disorders. And then going back to a grey zone just seems pseudo philosophical in the sense of “oh but nothing is black and white”. — Skalidris

In the end, when people read stories, do they want to be comforted in their opinions or do they want to learn something through a story that makes sense? — Skalidris

Yes, good observation. One of the things I learned about fiction is that it is not an invitation to implausibility. A former professor would say that plausibility is what connects us to the characters, no matter how outlandish they are.
I've watched a few movies where the director "cheats" on the characters just to move the story along. For example, just as when you get to know the hero -- very rational, intelligent, and courageous -- he, all of a sudden drops common sense and walks into the trap of a killer he's trying to catch and gets killed himself.

There’s more to metaphysics than just imagination it also includes reasoning not based upon experience but using deduction thereof such as found in math. It also includes tautologies which again are aspects of reason. — simplyG

I was going to say this until I scrolled down to your comment.


Metaphysics also exposes the error in our thinking. So, while that does not count as "knowledge", it makes us examine, or even discover, how we think ordinarily about reality, or the carelessness of how we think, or what we take for granted as true.

It seems to me like this is partially right, and partially missing something. Sans some interpretation of consciousness where mind does not emerge from or interact closely with nature, it would seem to me that our descriptive languages have a close causal relationship with nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a good starting point for a new thread because I was trying to discuss with @schopenhauer1 in the Kit Fine thread about what is existence without an observer.

So, I will respond to my comment that " without an observer, the world is a two-dimensional existence". And I know this will take a lot of argument but just as a start, I say that because without an observer (without us), there's no more vantage point at which we view the reality or the world. Think about "no point of view", but only the universe. All points of location can just be two-dimension.

So maybe a thought experiment about what would go away if sentient observers disappear.

I wish to explore this because we have come up with many mathematical formula that describe how the universe operates from the famous formula such as e=mc2 which has practical applications to many others.
Or is maths completely independent of the physical universe and it just so happens that some mathematics is good at describing some aspects of the physical universe and in fact supersedes it? — simplyG

Math was created within a closed system. Think of a language written in symbols. We came up with math because we need to describe the physical world predictably and reliably. We could have come up with a whole different numbering system than the one we have now.

I feel that your question is similar to saying that the periodic table of elements has always been embedded in the universe waiting to be discovered.

What is existence without an observer? What’s the relation of observer with thevworld. These kind of things. — schopenhauer1

"Stuff" is what exists without an observer. Actually, reality would be reduced to two-dimensional world without an observer. Do you agree?

I am not saying that the world doesn't exist without an observer (necessarily), but the explanation of what that is (ontologically). — schopenhauer1

Meaning what?

All of them? — Vera Mont

No! Are you serious? Nietzsche was wrong.

People who quote their favourite dead philosopher as if he had the final truth of everything. — Vera Mont

Maybe they do.

In other words, where is the "incorrect formulation" stemming from, and why do you think it implies a "why"? — schopenhauer1

You are combining both the questions about whether the world exists (or whether there is existence) and how do we know that the world exists.

"How is it that the world exists without an observer". Asking this question entails that existence depends on our knowledge (the observer).

Tell me, are you asking "how do we know the world exists?"